Neighbors

[morethanpretty]

My close next door neighbors are nice and we're good friends. The house the live in is actually owned by my nanny and they rent from her. Its a mother and her (now) teen daughter...they moved in when the daughter was in k-garten and my sis and I babysat her. The mother has been my ride to school and from. The girl is a bit spoiled, and they own way too many pets IMO...but overall pretty great.
We used to have a trailer on the other side and a sweet but very poor older lady who lived there. Its about a two acre lot and her sons raised fighting chickens, which they would fight and burn the carcasses. ICK! The people who bought the lot after she moved tore down the trailer and we had a bad problem with roaches for awhile. The place was disgusting. They started building a house but they had some problems and left the place...their emu escaped and we were unable to catch it...poor thing probably froze. The next people had problems and practically abandoned their dogs a nice rotreiler(sp?) and a mean dalmation which was chained up. We ended up taking food and water over for them and when it snowed, the dalmation was so miserable it allowed us to bring it over and pin it up until the owner came for it (the rot was already gone).
Some other people come and gone (apparently this town has some strict building codes ect.)
The neighbors after, had a pitbull mix puppy which was lonely and would come over and play with our black lab. But he became a problem when one of our little dogs went into heat. The man who owned the place didn't speak much english and we don't speak much spanish so we had to work through the daughter. I'm not sure if its the same ppl who own it or not but the people who live there seem nice. There are about 5 young girls (I think two related families live there) and they like our dogs and play w/ through the fence...our dogs probably go over there. Our dogs don't respect the barrier of a fence.
We're probably not the best neighbors...our black lab fathered some pups before he got fixed and the lady behind us threatend to shoot him if he kept eating her cat food...our dogs bark alot...so do the neighbors' though. We'll take your dog to the SPCA if you're mistreating it or bother you about it if its bothering us. But no major problems tho. We've known some good people and some not so good.

[Elspode]

We've been here since July, and have yet to do more than nod and smile at the neighbors on either side. I don't blame them, we're weird, and I'm sure a hell of lot more active than the previous owner of the place.

[John Adams]

We have lived in the same house for over 5 years now, bought it new in a subdivision. All of our neighbors are nice enough, my wife likes to be friends, my thoughts are - I didn't move here to make friends, I moved here because I liked the house, so just smile and wave and leave me alone. Of course the neighbor on one side always has everyone over for BBQ's or other stuff so my wife makes me go. I would rather go out and play with my kids.

[DanaC]

I have the perfect neighbours. Friendly and polite, will always keep an eye on things if one of us goes away.....chit chat if we happen to come across each other in the (shared) gardens, occassionally loan each other books.....but keep out of each others' business and don't feel the need to be in and out of each others houses. I've been in Joan's house twice in the two years I've been here and she's been in mine once. I do however have two of her books and she is busy reading a couple of mine (which will then no doubt find their way around a bunch of other people, which is great).

[Spexxvet]

We've been in our house for about ten years. The neighborhood was new in the mid-fifties, and since we've moved in, four homes owned by original owners (older folks) have chenged hands due to death or moving into "The Home". The last original husband died a few weeks ago - we don't know what the widow will do.
We're on a corner - on the "busy street" side we're very close to the single lady next door, but don't know the folks across the street. We used to be close with 5 families on the side street, four of whom have moved away. We had block parties, and would get together for drinks most weekends. At one point, there were 14 kids under 10 years old on our block. The street was usually crowded with playing kids. One of the wives was the quintessential princess-bitch. She thought she was still a cheerleader in highschool - real cliquey. The other folks were all nice.

[Stormieweather]

We just moved into our house in July, so don't know the neighbors well. Next door is an elderly woman who introduced herself when we were unloading our truck and the neighbor whose backyard abuts ours came around to say hello. Other than that, we wave and say good day if we should pass any of the other neighbors.

Directly across the street is a yuppie couple, no children. She works long, long hours (up and gone before dawn and home after dark) and he works non-existent hours. He spends his spare time (and there's a lot of it) in the garage puttering while playing classical music on the stereo.

To their right is the mansion of the subdivision, a humongous colonial with two story columns, pool, Lexus and Range Rover. A young couple with several children live there, but none have ventured out to meet my children. They have a lot of kids visiting and pool parties.

Across and left, the home doesn't actually front on our street. They sometimes take walks and appear to have a child about 5, a toddler and the Mrs. is pregnant. They often have noisy backyard get-togethers until the wee hours of the morning.

The really interesting (ie: weird) neighbors are on our left. The house is a two story, mustard colored, spanish style home 80-90 yrs old. It is surrounded by trees and shrubbery, literally a fence of trees and hedges. Everything is extremely unkempt, dank and dark. My family has an ongoing debate as to whether there are two elderly men who live there or a man and a masculine-looking woman. Twice, I saw the debatable character out in the yard, apparently shirtless. But it's very difficult to tell through all the foliage. They drink and then fight like cats and dogs. One has a very high pitched voice and shrieks obscenities. There is a lot of crashing and banging. They only work on the yard late at night. I have no idea how they manage not to cut off a foot, out there mowing and weed whacking at midnight.

Stormie

[warch]

My good neighbor, (the one we swap keys with) retired army nurse and her quiet and sweet dog are moving out. We have had a rash of robberies and she says she no longer feels safe. Her church has also undergone some major transition and she's feeling disconnected. She's moving up north to a small town. Crime is up, but I dont feel that threatened, ...yet. It's a city. She's the last of the "grandma houses" on the street. I have no doubt it will become more rental property, as are all the other houses surrounding us.

We'll hang on. build up our own folliage fences.

[busterb]

To the north of me is the tooth mans office, south is my old house, empty. To the west is courthouse and jail. East is empty lot. So I get along great with my neighbors.

[melidasaur]

I've lived in my neighborhood for about a year and a half. It's not the best neighborhood in town, but I love my house. My neighborhood is between two of the less desireable parts of town, Stabtown and Crackville. Despite the through trafffic, it's pretty quiet, with older homes and people that have lived there forever. Most of the people at the end of the block are all related. The rest of the people I don't know. My neighbors across the street are nosy and have a messy yard, but they are nice.

When we moved in, people kept stopping by and asking for money. Apparently, we had the reputation for being rich. I think people quickly learned otherwise.

[chrisinhouston]

WE get along fine with our neighbors, although we tend not to do too much with the ones with small kids as we are past that stage.

Talk about a bad neighbor experience, I think I can beat most with this family story. In 1952 my mother's sister moved back to the family farm in Minnesota with her husband and 3 sons, she was pregnant with the 4th. Her husband was between jobs and our grandparents had invited them to live there until the job started up,

A reclusive man who lived next to grandpa's farm had no trespassing signs everywhere, it was rumored he had a still for home made brew. Anyway he shot one of the family's dogs because it trespassed on his land! My uncle Bill went over to pick bring the dog back and the man stepped out of his front door and shot him right through the head. Funny thing was uncle Bill was decorated war veteran who had served behine enemy lines in Burma in the OSS, and had also been shot down twice and survived; now he was dead. He left a wife and 4 sons between the age of 5 and 0 (the one in the oven, so to say). To make matters worse the guy who killed him managed to surrender all his life savings and ownership of his farm to his parents so my aunt would not get any.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Where were you? I don't remember you asking permission to leave NY?

I don't have to leave ny, though I occasionally get a weekend pass to Tanglewood. For example, if Mass were "a map of tasmania" and the left hip socket was Bennington, VT, and the right hip socket was Albany, NY, we'd be right there on the navel, putting Monson down there in the map of Tassie...

[bluecuracao]

I finally got to meet my upstairs neighbors' baby, who's about 6 months old now. I wasn't even aware they HAD a baby until maybe a couple of months ago, when I heard some faint crying in the middle of the night. He must be a pretty quiet little guy, lucky parents.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It seems the most common problems with neighbors are pets, yours or theirs, and different opinions on what a yard/exterior should look like.

I grew up in a small New England town where everyone not only knew everyone else, they knew what you drove, where you worked, all your kids and your bad* habits.

In todays hectic, electronic, commuting, lifestyles, we know people around the world better than people around the block. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean how many of LabRat's neighbors have seen her butt?


* subjective